The Denver Nuggets ride to a rollercoaster victory over Knicks

The Not-so-good:

The entire third quarter was absolutely abysmal.

Marcus Morris dropped 16 points in that quarter alone. The Nuggets offense came to a grinding halt very rapidly coming out of the half. They settled for contested drives and difficult mid range shots.

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Nuggets took 35% of their shots tonight from the mid-range, but only 29% from three. An ideal shot profile would be closer to swapping those numbers. This is especially true when noting that they shot 35.7% from three tonight, which results in 1.068 points per shot. From mid-range, they shot 31.2%, which results in a mere 0.624 points per shot.

Jamal Murray struggled on offense, failing to take threes coming off of screens. Instead he settled  for more difficult shots, only going 5-14. He did hit a very important three point shot late in the game, which ended up being the nail in the coffin. His defense still continued to be solid for Denver, playing great defense in the post on a few possessions. Murray finished the game with the lowest plus-minus of the game with +2.

Speaking of plus-minus, Michael Porter Jr. was a team-worst -2, though a good chunk of his minutes came in the problem-filled third quarter.

Porter provided a lot offensively, but looked lost at times on defense. One notable event was when 34 year old Taj Gibson shook him, then blew by him near the basket.

Recap:

Despite the miscues, the Nuggets did end up winning, even if it wasn’t in ideal fashion. The minutes from Porter are valuable. Jokic repeated an impressive performance. The lack of urgency in the third quarter was probably the result of overconfidence. Once the game needed to be won, key personnel stepped up.